When they say there is nothing to tell

What it usually means

“Nobody has ever asked me this before.” For a lot of people, especially anyone who grew up being told not to make a fuss, being asked about themselves is unfamiliar. The first response to something unfamiliar is to deflect. It is not a decision, it is a reflex, and reflexes pass.

“I don’t know where to start.” “Tell me about your life” is an impossible question. So is “what was your childhood like?” The answer covers twenty years and the person cannot see the edges of it, so they say there is nothing to tell rather than fail at it.

“An ordinary life is not worth writing down.” This one is a belief, and it is worth naming out loud. A life spent in one town, in one trade, raising children, is the life that most people actually lived, and it is the one that disappears first, because nobody writes it down.

Occasionally it does mean no. If someone is telling you they do not want to, that is theirs to decide. You can come back to it another day, but you cannot push through it, and you should not try.

What to do instead

Ask about one thing, not a period

Not “tell me about the war years”, but “what did you do when the siren went?” Not “what was your first job?”, but “what did you do on your first morning there?” A single answerable question gives the person something to stand on. The wider story usually follows, unasked.

Go in through an object

Put something in their hands. A photograph, a medal, a wedding ring, a tool from the shed, a tin of buttons. Ask what it is and where it came from. People who will not talk about themselves will talk at length about a thing, and the thing is almost always attached to a person, a place and a year.

Ask about someone else

“What was your mother like when she was angry?” “Who was the funniest person on that street?” “What was your foreman called?” It feels like talking about other people, so it does not trip the modesty reflex, and the answers are full of them.

Ask for the practical detail

What things cost, how you got to work, what you ate, who you sat next to. People will happily answer a factual question they know the answer to. Ten minutes of this and the tone has changed.

Let them correct you

If you have an old family story slightly wrong, say it slightly wrong. People who will not volunteer a story will absolutely put you right about one.

Things that make it worse

• Telling them their life is fascinating. It sounds like flattery, and it raises the bar so high that anything they say next feels like a disappointment.
• Recording without asking. If it comes out later, you lose more than the recording.
• Bringing the whole family. Three people asking questions is an interview panel. One person and a cup of tea is a conversation.
• Doing it at a family event. Christmas afternoon is the worst possible time. There is noise, there are other people, and everyone is tired.
• Trying to get everything in one go. Forty minutes is plenty. The second conversation is nearly always better than the first, because by then they have been thinking about it.

If it is a parent with dementia

The same principle holds, but the specific question matters even more, and the aim changes. You are not trying to fill gaps in a timeline. You are letting someone talk about what they can still reach easily, which is often the distant past, a song, a job done for forty years, a route walked every day.

Follow what comes. Do not correct dates. If a story arrives three times, take it three times, because the third telling often has a detail the first two did not.

If you would rather not be the one asking

Some families find it easier when the person asking is not a son or a daughter. There is less history in the room, no habit of who interrupts whom, and no obligation to protect anyone’s feelings. That is what I do: I sit with the person, record the conversation, and write it up properly afterwards.

It is not the only way, and if you would rather do it yourself, the 100 questions and the recording guide will get you most of the way there.